I use Outlook as my email client at work, but I don't want to use it to manage my tasks and todos. (Instead I use plain text files and Emacs org-mode.) Since many todo items start out as mails in my inbox, I often need to reference these mails.

Is there some clever way to create a link (a URL) that opens a specific email in Outlook when clicked?

8 Answers
8

You can do this with a little bit of code in Outlook and a little bit of code in Emacs.

First, if you're using Outlook 2007 you'll need to enable Outlook URLs with a registry addition. Instructions and the registry file can be found here courtesy of David Tan.

Next, this macro can be added to Outlook and will get the GUID of the current email message, create a Org-Mode link and deposit it into the clipboard.

'Adds a link to the currently selected message to the clipboard
Sub AddLinkToMessageInClipboard()
Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
Dim doClipboard As New DataObject
'One and ONLY one message muse be selected
If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count <> 1 Then
MsgBox ("Select one and ONLY one message.")
Exit Sub
End If
Set objMail = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
doClipboard.SetText "[[outlook:" + objMail.EntryID + "][MESSAGE: " + objMail.Subject + " (" + objMail.SenderName + ")]]"
doClipboard.PutInClipboard
End Sub

And lastly, update your .emacs file to include the Outlook link code. Just add this somewhere after org-mode is setup.

(require 'org-outlook)

Now you can call the macro (I added it to my toolbar in Outlook for quick access) and you can quickly create a link to the email in Emacs.

One gotcha, GUID's change when you move a message between document stores, so if you get the GUID to the message while it's on your Exchange server and then move it to your local PST file the link will change. Move the message before you get the GUID.

Thanks for this answer. I found out that I somewhat needed to create an empty form to prevent compilation error on undefined DataObject.
–
Laurent'Nov 5 '11 at 13:24

@ChristianBerg: I'm using Outlook 2003, so maybe I can have hyperlinks without bothering with the registry, but your simplification did not work, Outlook was unable to find the URL. And every time I clicked on a link in Emacs, a new outlook-process was started. So I sticked to the great solution by user259...
–
Keks DoseJan 26 '12 at 13:56

This is fantastic ! Thank you for providing this solution. I tried it with outlook 2007 with the registry tweak and it worked like a charm ! I found 1 issue if I ran the macro when I had a meeting invite / appointment selected. The code threw an exception. Since I use it only on the inbox I solved this by Dim objMail as Object instead of MailItem - however this may not be the right solution since the code could still fail if the item selected doesn't have Subject/ SenderName members. The code could probably check if the selected item is of proper type and provide a MsgBox if it is not.
–
koushikFeb 22 '12 at 15:23

1

I "scratched this itch" of mine a bit more as I had to record links to some appointments for working on related items (so I can refer ot info / attachments therein or reply all when I have updates etc). Now this can export mails, calendar items, contacts, notes, journal entries and at least will not fail when invoked on other entries. The modified code is at pastebin.com/gNWLVNRk (I can provide a diff if it would help - though I don't know how to make on in VBA). I didn't have to make any other change (emacs-side or regsitry) for this to work on my end. HTH.
–
koushikJul 23 '12 at 13:50

Linker™ for Windows® creates hyperlinks to items and folders in Outlook, and to files and folders in Windows Explorer. It is a system tray applet places the hyperlink in the Windows clipboard. The hyperlink can then be pasted into any Microsoft Office document, web page, e-mail message, or any document that supports hyperlinks.

Not without some kind of custom code. The Outlook URI's can get you to the containing folder within Outlook, but that's about it. You would need to come up with a clever filing strategy that aligned with your linking strategy to get more granular.

I'm not sure about referencing a specific email but depending on your system you might be able to copy the email to the same location as the todo item. Just drag/drop the mail to a folder or the desktop and it will create a copy of the mail that you can treat as a normal file.

If you would be using .doc or more "advanced" files than .txt you could then link to this Outlook message file.

I'll go with that solution. Here's my new workflow: Drag the mail to a temporary folder. Create the todo item in org-mode. Add the message file as an attachment to the item: C-c C-a m (the message file is moved to the attachments folder). Later I can open the message from the todo item by pressing C-c C-a o.
–
Christian BergNov 18 '09 at 16:07

You can even use a redirection service so that you get a HTTP link (because Outlook: links are probably not detected automatically if you paste is somewhere, but HTTP links are) (download), just replace the last line with:

This seemed promising but in Outlook 2013 for me this creates a .mht file in AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook` and opens that in IE using a 'mhtml:file://.. url so no go.
–
Miserable VariableJan 5 at 17:30